AT&T expands 4G LTE to 11 new markets including NYC, San Francisco, L.A.

AT&amp;T announced on Thursday that it has expanded its high-speed 4G long-term evolution network to 11 new cities, including the New York metropolitan area, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

AT&amp;T's 4G LTE is now available in a total of 26 markets to 74 million customers. The announcement was made Thursday by John Stankey, president and chief executive officer of AT&amp;T Business Solutions at Citi's 22nd Annual Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco, Calif. The full list of 4G LTE markets recently added are:

The roll-out of AT&amp;T's LTE network has been much slower than rival Verizon, which which debuted its fourth-generation high-speed network in December of 2010 in 38 metropolitan areas and more than 60 commercial airports across the U.S. Verizon's 4G network currently covers more than 186 million Americans, while AT&amp;T's is available to 74 million.

Speculation has suggested that 4G LTE markets and related technology in phones will be mature enough this year that Apple could offer an LTE-capable iPhone model. Last year, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said poor battery life and other issues with current LTE technology were not up to standard.

"The first generation of LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises with the handset," Cook said last April, "and some of those we are just not willing to make."

AT&T's corporate office is in Dallas so I can understand the TX cities but North Carolina?? So far nothing north of San Francisco west of the plains. AT&T is definitely not starting with large cities, probably hoping they can learn from mid size ones (and larger ones close to home). With Verizon leaving WA (selling to Frontier), my state is wide open. They really just need to cover the I-5 corridor through WA and OR to start with since my guess is 80% of the population of those two states live within 50 miles of that freeway.

We've been able to make calls in New York for some time now. But that wasn't the biggest issue. When I first got my iPhone about three years ago, 95% of my calls get dropped. Now it's probably 1% or less. There were also places, like Fifth Avenue in the 40s (near the main branch of the NY Public Library), where the phone simply refused to work. That's no longer the case either.

I always thought that I would switch from AT&T back to Verizon, but by the time Verizon became available, it was no longer necessary and with Verizon, you can't browse and talk at the same time.

The big problem I still have is that there are times/areas where weather, stocks or maps just seems to lock up. Don't know whether that's an iOS issue or a communications issue.

The big problem I still have is that there are times/areas where weather, stocks or maps just seems to lock up. Don't know whether that's an iOS issue or a communications issue.

It's a network issue. It happens to me on my iPhone 4S, and my colleagues, some of whom have BlackBerry Bolds running on AT&T's HSPA+ network. Even with 5 bars of signal, from 10:00am-6:00 in many parts of Manhattan the network is jammed with traffic and won't let data through, or lets it through very slowly.

I don't think there is any doubt the next iPhone will include LTE. Verizon might also be at a slight disadvantage in terms of LTE since from what I have read AT&T and Sprint's LTE implementation is a newer and faster version. Sprint and possibly AT&T are using LTE-Advanced whereas Verizon is just using the older LTE. So once all networks are fully deployed in 2013 Verizon might be the slowest of the three. Being first isn't always the best.

Why the surprise about NC? It is the 10th largest state with close to 10 million people with 3 metro areas of around a million or more. More than twice the population of Oregon and several million more than Washington. Don't forget their corporate HQ might be in Dallas, but their wireless HQ are still in Atlanta.

Didn't realize NC had so many people but Washington is still 13th with no LTE coverage. The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area is the 15th largest (3.4M) in the US while Charlotte is part of a NC/SC metro area down at 33 (1.7M). I don't want to get into a numbers battle so I apologize for belittling the people of NC. My comment about lack of support north of SF stands, however.

AT&T's corporate office is in Dallas so I can understand the TX cities but North Carolina?? So far nothing north of San Francisco west of the plains. AT&T is definitely not starting with large cities, probably hoping they can learn from mid size ones (and larger ones close to home). With Verizon leaving WA (selling to Frontier), my state is wide open. They really just need to cover the I-5 corridor through WA and OR to start with since my guess is 80% of the population of those two states live within 50 miles of that freeway.

Believe me. If the carriers could blanket the nation, even the world, with cell sites, they would. Typically city and county governments do NOT like cell sites in their right-of-way. Add the tin foil hat crowd and you have the perfect storm of resistance. It can take years before a carrier or tower company gets approval to construct a badly needed site.

Another factor in play is that the carriers view the cell site as revenue source. They typically calculate how much they are gaining in subscriber revenue per site. If the costs of putting one up and maintaining it outweigh the money coming in, they'll think very hard before putting one up. That's why you rarely see them in rural areas where there aren't a lot of users.

So what's the solution? Scream loudly to both your city and county governments and planning commissions that you want your cell site. Then scream loudly to your carrier that you want your cell site. That is all.

I don't know if this is old news or not. I've had 4G LTE with my mi-fi card in my area south of San Jose, Santa Cruz to be exact, for the better part of six months. I guess it just had not been announced. This press release is for the investors I think.

Aren't you the same guy that bragged about AT&T's theoretical max speed of 14.4Mbps while feeling sorry for us poor Verizon and Sprint iPhone users as we hobbled along? Of course you had about 20,000 or more post at that time. What happened? Did they delete your account for your always polite, respectful, and informative posts?

If you want to use WiFi as an analogy to LTE, then LTE-Advanced would be like WiFI-N and and Verizon's current LTE would be like WiFi-B. Sure there will always be bottlenecks, and the most important one will always be the backhaul to the actual tower and the number of users.

AT&T's theoretical max speed is based on their current implementation of LTE. If you are referring to their '3G' speeds it's based on their current implementation of HSPA or HSPA+ which far exceeds 14.4Mbps. If you are referring to the iPhone 4S it was a theoretical max speed of 14.4Mbps but it not HSPA+. If you are referring to what US cellular network has the fastest iPhone download speed then that would be AT&T. This is not up for debate!

And in regards to my comment to jd_in_sb I was pointing out that regardless of what the towers will push with faster data rates these handheld devices will still be far behind in being able to handle the load. That does not, in any way, state that Sprint's iPhone with EV-DO Rev. A is faster in maximum real world tests than AT&T's iPhone with Category 10 HSDPA. It was your inability to understand the content that made you think that a theoretical maximum was possible in the real world. I welcome you to join the real world more often. It's not such a bad place.

BTW, my example was not an analogy.

PS: It's funny how people only want to consider downlink speeds and never uplink or latency. I even hear people claim that LTE-Advanced is 100MBps as if that is or was ever the definition.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Quick! What's the largest city in California that doesn't have a Spanish name?
wait for it...
Oakland.

From Wikipedia...

The original settlement in what is now the downtown was initially called "Contra Costa" ("opposite shore", the Spanish name for the lands on the east side of the Bay) and was included in Contra Costa County before Alameda County was established on March 25, 1853.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

There are much larger cities missing from the list....like Chicago and Philadelphia. But somehow Oklahoma City, San Diego, and Austin rate. I'm happy for them but confused at AT&T's "plan" here.

Some cities may be currently under served and need immediate expansion so it makes sense to upgrade to the latest technology at this time. Other factors may be acquisitions or partnerships with small regional cell providers requiring standardization which again would make it logical to upgrade to the latest technology since you have spend money on infrastructure anyway. I think Puerto Rico falls in this category.

The fact that they seem to be on a rapid deployment schedule means that they apparently plan to have the network fully supporting LTE as quickly as possible. The 700 mHz spectrum should really improve the signal inside buildings so I am looking forward to that. Keep in mind that LTE is data only right now, so voice call signal quality will remain unchanged. I'm not sure if AT&T voice calls are supported on HSPA+ or just HSPA. I assume they are, on hardware that allows it.

Since I just got a 4G HSPA+ capable AirCard, I can definitely feel the difference between the data speeds of the slower iPhone which is only 3G and the faster HPSA+ 4G. Seems about twice as fast.

Believe me. If the carriers could blanket the nation, even the world, with cell sites, they would. Typically city and county governments do NOT like cell sites in their right-of-way. Add the tin foil hat crowd and you have the perfect storm of resistance. It can take years before a carrier or tower company gets approval to construct a badly needed site.

Another factor in play is that the carriers view the cell site as revenue source. They typically calculate how much they are gaining in subscriber revenue per site. If the costs of putting one up and maintaining it outweigh the money coming in, they'll think very hard before putting one up. That's why you rarely see them in rural areas where there aren't a lot of users.

So what's the solution? Scream loudly to both your city and county governments and planning commissions that you want your cell site. Then scream loudly to your carrier that you want your cell site. That is all.

That could well be, but Verizon has LTE coverage in Seattle-Tacoma/Olympia/Spokane in WA state already, so it's not like the city/county gov. are the only problems.

LOL, thank God for people like you here to enlighten us imbeciles. So just out of curiosity, what will your next name be after this account gets deleted? Solipism-Y or X.2? Can you ever just let any comment go without dissecting it and arguing over every minutiae down to the molecular level? Forums are meant for discussions and debates, but you really need to try and be less like Newt Gingrich when making your points. Take it down a notch or two. All I pointed out was that AT&T and Sprint were using LTE-Advanced and Verizon isn't at the moment, but probably will in the future. Relax

Someone has sand in their vagina today.

Why would I just let SockRolid comment "go"? He made an interesting factual statement that I wanted to know more about. If you are uninterested in his trivia or not curious how a port side city in California could not have a Spanish name then maybe your self declared title as imbecile is well deserved. I was curious to know more so I did a whole 5 seconds of research to find out why which I then posted to this forum to compliment SockRolid's interesting trivia.

You keep mentioning my account getting deleted. A simple Google search would tell you it's not deleted. A little more research or a simple inquiry would present you with the full details as to why I choose to change my username, but since you consider 5 seconds of research to be "dissecting over every minutiae down to the molecular level" I can't imagine you'd consider your grey matter to work out these simple details.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

I don't care whether it was deleted or not. I am sure you will get back to your 25,000 post count in no time at all. I have also observed that your posts are often replete with condescending and snide remarks and wouldn't be surprised if the moderators felt you had crossed the line one too many times. So carry on Newt and post away.

Says the kid posting personal attacks....

PS: You clearly do care because you keep mentioning it being deleted instead of actually inquiring as to why it is no longer in use. On top of that it shows that you prefer to come to conclusions without any factual data to back them up which makes you participation on any forum pretty much pointless.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

I don't care whether it was deleted or not. I am sure you will get back to your 25,000 post count in no time at all. I have also observed that your posts are often replete with condescending and snide remarks and wouldn't be surprised if the moderators felt you had crossed the line one too many times. So carry on Newt and post away.

I'm pretty sure Solipsism's posts are the main component of any inherent value in these forums. His posts are typically substantive and well thought out. Yours, on the other hand...

I would say that Raleigh is included because of the Apple data center, but that is a 3 hour drive away. Raleigh being the state capital, having a population of ~2 million, and being part of the 'research triange', that includes the research universities of NC State University, Duke University, and UNC-Chapel Hill are all pretty sound reasons to me.

So that leaves Philly as the only city in the top 10 in population in the U.S. that AT&T has not rolled LTE out in. Guess where I live?

(Jacksonville, at #11, is the next largest city with no LTE love.)

I'm confused.
I just looked at AT&T's 4G data coverage map and it shows a solid block of coverage in the northeast that blankets Deleware, SE Pennsylvania, NJ, NYC, Long Island and Connecticut. I live in the middle of all that, but I have no 4G devices to test it out. Is this map incorrect? Zooming in on Philly it clearly shows full coverage...

[Edit: Nevermind. I fell for the 4G (but not LTE) trick... I knew something was wrong but I posted first, thought second... Sorry]

1) Puerto Rico having 4G before major cities in US states is a bit baffling.

We were just down there for vacation 2 months ago & AT&T owns the Peurto Rican Market. All of the large cell providers are there and even some local ones, but everyone that we talked to had an AT&T phone. They must have a really good network down there or something.